Transcripts
1. Hello and Welcome!: Hello and welcome to Procreate, solid foundations part
for 2D animation. Procreate is a
great art program, but you can also
animate with procreate, and that's what I'll be
teaching you on this course. Alter your right through the process of
creating an animation. Start to finish from a series of video stills of me
looking a bit silly, doing a martial arts kick
in my own back garden. You will learn the
process of setting up an animation
using rotoscoping. You will learn how to have
more than one layer for every animation frame
so that you can really build up the
complexity of your animation. More than that, you'll
learn how to add a layer behind plus a layer in front
of your entire animation. To really give it a nice look, you'll learn how to speed up and slow down your animation. And you'll also learn
what onion skinning is. I'll provide you with all
the materials you'll need. And by the end of the class, you will have a great
looking animation. Or why not create a short video of you doing something
fun and then apply the techniques from this course and come up with something which is yours or
looks spectacular. Go straight to the first
video and let's get started. I'll see you in the next lesson.
2. Set up your Animation: Hello. In this video, we're going to start
learning about how to do 2D animation inside procreate. I'll show you how to
set up an animation. I'll show you how to
add frames and how to add layers, various
different things. There is not enough
time to do is to teach you the principles
behind 2D animation. Things like squash and stretch,
things like anticipation, that is complete
course all by itself, even to teach the basics. And so rather than asked you
to do an animation yourself, we're going to be doing
something called rotoscoping. To do this, I went out into
my back garden and I put on a really silly outfit
so that when I do these various different
movements which I'm doing now, hopefully you can see
clearly where my arms are, where my legs are,
and I've chosen one of the cakes
that I'm doing now. I've taken off various
different frames at regular intervals
from that kick. And we're going to import those into procreate and trace over the top to create your own 2D
animation with rotoscoping. It's been around for
a long, long time. Anyway, let's move
on because frankly, I'm embarrassed about
you watching me have a midlife crisis in
my own back garden. We're in Procreate and I want to import those
various frames. Now they are available
for you as a download. But what I'll do is
rather than creating a new file and importing
those frames one by one, I will import the first
frame which is k 01, to get my basic file. Then I will come to my wrench icon and you can see I have add
selected at the top. And then I'm going
to come to insert a file and I will
tap on k is 02. You can see I have layer one, which was the original
file I imported, and that new image has been inserted on top as
a separate layer. And then I will curve and I
will insert a file and I will choose k3 that gets imported. Now the reason I
started by importing my first image for
layer one image is because I know that all files I'm importing are all
the exact same size. And so I'm not going to have
a problem of creating a file and having to re-size
every image that comes in, that would lead to all
kinds of problems. I love the next file, k is
0 for I don't touch it, I don't try and transform it. Then I come back in and
insert a file, okay, 05. Gradually I'm going to
build up this sequence. Now this like a lot of
things inside animation is going to take a lot of time because 2D animation can be fun, but at times it is tedious, especially when you're
doing stuff like this. Just be ready for that. It is a lot of work. So I will fade out and I will fade back in
again once I've imported all the separate images into this one procreate file. So I'll see you in just
a couple of seconds. Okay, They are all done. When you are importing things, try saying frame one, frame to frame three. Say it out loud because
I lost count twice. When I did, I had to go
to the bottom and start counting up wall
2345, like this. But anyway, we want to see what that looks like
when it's animated. Because all I have here is just a whole load of
different images. They're all active. And if I come to the top one
and I turn it invisible, you can see the
previous frame and the previous frame in
the previous frame. But we want to see
this animated. So come to our wrench
icon at the moment, at a selected, we will come to the next icon along
which is Canvas. Second one down,
animation assist. I will turn that on. And if you watch at the bottom, you will see a little
graphic popping up. There you go. This is the animation
assist bar. While we want to see what
the animation looks like. So we will tap on Play. There you go. Yeah. Okay. Yes, I know lousy technique, but I'm here to teach you about animation
inside Procreate, not how to have a
midlife crisis. Do a martial law kick. So if I zoom in on the bottom, you can see all the frames
that I have laid out and I can just tap on any frame to make it the
currently visible one. Now this is something
you can't do inside the layers panel because
all the layers of visible, what this is doing
is cycling through every visible layer or group and showing them quickly
one after the other. And in that way, you get yourself an animation which
frankly is exhausting me. So I will come to Settings. At the moment is set to loop. And if you look at the very top at the moment it's set to loop. That's why I keep
on doing that kick again and again and again. If I set it to one
shot and press Play, one-shot, press play
again, one shot. All right, well look if
I come to ping-pong, that will play to the end of the animation and then it will reverse the animation back
to the start like this. Well, let's face it, one shot is the least exhausting
out of all of those. Now underneath frames per
second, moment, it's set to 15. If I make it, say 24 frames
a second, Let's try that. Because it's 24 frames a
second, everything goes faster. There you go. That's me actual speed, right? I think that might be a
little bit fast for this. So maybe I'll take it down. What was it about 15, I think I started about 18
frames a second. Okay, we'll go with that. Okay, So there's various
other sliders here, which I think it's
best to show you those once we've gone a
little further down the line. Because the next thing
we want to do with this is a turnoff
Animation Assist. So now we're back to
our regular workspace. And you can see I've
got all these images. What I wanted to do is create another layer on top of
layer one for example. And I want to trace over
my outline so that I get a line drawing rather
than the photo itself. That is the essence
of rotoscoping. But straightaway, I've got
two different problems. Number one, I want to
work on my first try, but all the frames above are all visible that
all getting in the way. So every time I work in a frame, I've got to come up
and I've got to stop making everything
invisible one-by-one. That is not going to happen. Instead, here is one of the single most
useful tips I can give you when you work
in your animation. I want layer one visible, the one right at the bottom. So all I do is I
put my finger on the checkbox which
controls the visibility. And instead of tapping, I'm just going to hold on
when I do look at that, everything became
invisible apart from the layer I have selected. And I help, I figured out
that is gonna be a massive, massive time-saver for you. Then of course, all I need
to do is come to later 27, turn that on, make
that the active layer. And now I want to trace over
the top, what would I do? Well, for this CrowdStrike
coming down to inking, because look, it can look fairly nice with a sketchy outline. That could look nice. But I want to go
beyond this instead. I wanted to a couple of
things here which might prove to be useful
for me later on. Let's try technical pen. Let's just try blue, shall we? Let's check our size. Let's zoom in a little
bit on my head. Oh, sorry, I was
concentrating there. But let's make our price size. Is that the right size? Yeah, that's not too bad. And so double-check, make sure I've got the
right layer selected. I want my transparent
layer, not layer one. Now I'm just going
to trace around the outlines of
May on this frame. I'm also going to
trace off some of the biggest shapes and get
some fairly closed areas. Because if I want to
flip this later on, I think for this I'm just gonna
do the general outline of my iss plus nose and
round like this. And the is I don't want a
lot of details with this. Nice and quick. You'll find certain
areas like this. Unfortunately, the video
burnt out in certain areas here when you get
stuff like this and also you will get
blurred frames as well. You just going to have
to guesstimate it. Putting some of the
large areas like this animal so it cannot cross, cuts out a little bit
of my belly there. Because I'm vain, because I want this to look a
little bit more dynamic. Do I want my mouth and
there? Yeah, I'll do that. But whatever I decide to
put on this first frame, rarely should be
consistent throughout. And I'm going to
be doing this 26 times the mole worth
I give myself here, the more that amount
of work is going to be multiplied by 26. But let's just put stuff in. I'm just drawing rough foot shapes rather than the clothes. I don't want this to be closed. I want it to be a little bit
more abstract than that. Just a figure doing a kick. I'm tempted to do as well, is just a margin where
there's a center line going down my chest like this. So that's my very first frame. And if I come here and I make the layer
underneath invisible, There's my first
traced off shape. I'll just erase that bit there. And then let me
show you something. Let's come back to
Animation Assist. And I'll press play again. Did you see that little
blink or right at the start of what I was
doing a show you once again, because the proper I've
got at the moment is look, I've got let's make things visible because
that's one thing to say. If a layer is invisible in the layer stack when you play your animation, it won't show. That is very important. Sometimes you will want
to hide certain layers. But let's make this plus
a few layers visible. Because that was my first frame. That's my next frame. And there's my next
frame. What I don't want. The photo of me, then
the image of me, than a photo of me, then an image of me, and so on and so on, that's
going to look terrible. So this is what you do. You select the layer
you've been tracing from. Then you swipe left to
select the layer on top. And at the top you
come to group and you rename this group
to G for group 01. Because one procreate
plays by your animation, it will look at either a layer like this one or this
one or this one. Or it will look at
a group and every layer inside that group
counts as one frame. You can have one layer, you can have ten layers. It all just counts
as a single frame. It'll play this entire group for one hundred
thousandth of a second. Then all play the layer on
top for an 800th of a second, layer on top for an 18th, and so on and so on and so on. This is very useful because
there will be times where do you want to build
up your animation in layers? For example, with this, I'm going to be putting a
more fancy brush on this, on a layer above layer
27 when I'm done. And then if I wanted to do
another effect on top of that, that might be on top
of another layer. When it comes to animation, groups are exactly the
same as a single layer. Alright, well look, I've
cut a lot of work to do. I've got what, 26
separate frame. So I've got to repeat what
I just did 25 more times. I'm not gonna make
you sit through that. And I'm not gonna make you do it either way I've done this. I will export the
file as I didn't have kicker 01 or
something like that, so that you don't
have to do all this work yourself unless
you really want to fade out now and I will
see you in the next video.
3. Rotoscoping your Work: Okay. I'm back after a whole
load of rotoscoping. This file is kicker 01 and it's available as a download just in case you want
to follow along. If I open up my layers panel, what those all my
images and you can see I've got a basic outline of me on every frame
now because it's animation and everything
takes a long time to do. I've got to go through
and in the layers panel, I've got to uncheck every image which has the
original screen grab. This is going to
take a bit of time, so I will fade out and fade
back in once I've done this. Just coming to the last one. They're all my drawings. Let's see what it looks like. So come to Canvas, Animation Assist
and turn that on. What's going on there. I have a frame there with
nothing in that stretch across and count back from
the end frame, 12345678. So now let's come to
the layers panel. Come to the top, 12345678. There we go. Now that's on. Hopefully the whole thing should work a little bit better. Sir. Girl. Is Warren wrote a
script individual. Just play it through a
couple of times to see what it will look
like as you do. One thing you might
notice is you get something called
chattering lines. That is where when you trace
off from the photograph, you'll put, say, the line of the rear thigh in a
certain position. You can see between
those two frames it doesn't change that much. But also, I was a bit
more heavy handed with my pen on this frame than
I was on this frame. And so you get slight differences in places which aren't moving very much. Take the rear most
foot, for example. Those changes which you
don't really notice that at the time. When you play. If you look at that rear foot, just at the end
of the animation, you see how trembles, that's what a
chattering line is. I'm not gonna worry
about that right now because this
is just a sketch. I want to build something
on top of this. And actually for the
technique I once, I quite like the idea
of a chart or a line, but just for now, let's
come to our settings. It's on 18 frames per second. I think that is a
little bit slow, so I'm going to
increase that to say 2425 frames per second
and press Play. Yeah, that's much more crisp
and a lot more snappy. Now I'm gonna come and I'm
going to tap on any frame and just drag to the
left and I can scrub through the timeline like this. What I'm looking
for is that frame, That's where the foot is
at its most extended. Let's check that. Yes, it is. That is something that will
be known as a key frame. It's an important part
of the movement for this particular kid gets the
maximum extent of the leg. I'm wondering what
it would look like if I was to pause it
a little bit there. So one thing I can do is
tap on the frame itself. I could try coming
to the whole slider. And if I do that, and I do that, I get a little
slightly gray frame just to the right
of my active frame. What that's telling me is I put an extra frame of animation
and it stuck to the right. If I was to put a whole
duration of two or three. Now I've got my
original key frame plus an additional three. All right, well let's
take a look at that. That's holding a
little bit much. Maybe I can come
back to this frame. Again. I'm bringing it down to maybe
one or something like that. And try again. Here.
I quite like that. I know on tracing
from real life. But the problem with
tracing from real life is sometimes it looks like it's
been traced from real life. But with animation, you
don't necessarily want that. Sometimes you add
exaggerated movements. You want a little bit more
push and pull in the timing of your animation to get
something which people are very good at recognizing
as animation. For that, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna take away that. Another thing I can do
is come to duplicate. Now instead of a frame
after my keyframe, which is exactly the same
and will never change. With this one. I could change the movement
on this slightly. In order to do that, let's
come to settings because you have something here
called onion skin frames. And if I start to slide
that up, look at this. You can start to see the
frames of animation. You can kind of see the
movement of what I'm doing, onion skin opacity
without controls. How easy it is to see
the onion frames, like if I take it down, you
can barely see them at all. If you bring it up, you
get quite a strong effect. On at the bottom
I have something called color secondary frames. If I turn that on, now at the moment it hasn't
kicked in just yet. But if I move around
there, you see that? As I move through, you
can see my primary frame, which is the frame
I'm on at the moment. Is in my original blue, the color that I use to sketch any frames you can
see which are in red, are the frames leading
up to the frame I'm on. Any frames which
are in green are the frames that are going
to come after this frame. Think of it as green for
green traffic light. You can go ahead. This can be very useful
because it gives you an idea of what's happening with the flow
of your animation. Because almost always
you want your frames to flow smoothly from
one to the other. So I can crank
that up if I want. But also one thing that I
do find useful is if I just wrote the onion skin frames backwards or forwards like this. Then you can see, take
for example head. Can you see, as more
frames start to appear, you get an idea of the
movement of the head or water. You can see there is
a fairly smooth arc on those red frame
is going backwards. That tells me that I have
a smooth movement there, which I would expect
because I am rotoscoping. But if you're creating
your own animations, this can be very useful because
if in that head section, if you are getting
through like this and all of a sudden you saw say, red frame that suddenly
jumped off to one side. You'd know there's
something wrong with that frame where the
head jumps off to one side because you don't get that relatively
smooth curve. And for example,
look at the curve of the top of the head
with the green frames. By rocking backwards
and forward, I can see a smooth
curve going there that way I know that
animation is pretty smooth. The other thing,
blend primary frame. What that's doing is it's
taken my primary frame, which is the blue one,
which clearly stands out. And he planted in with the other frames that
I have that I can see the movement as a whole
without being maybe distracted by the color
of the primary frame. Let's take onion
skin opacity down. There's my primary
frame now in green. Let's turn that off actually, because usually I do prefer to see the primary
frame of what it's doing. I do find sometimes
when that happens, it hasn't reset itself
back to the blue. So sometimes I find I
need to scrub through a little bit like this until eventually there it is again. Now, I was saying, Oh, his great idea. Let's stick in an
extra duplicate frame, which is the one I'm on now. I don't need it, so I
will just tap on it and I will delete it in that way
you can not frames out. Alright, so let's play just once more just to
see what it looks like. There you go. I'm gonna turn off. Animation is set for
a moment because now I can see all the frames, which is a bit of a mess. You can't tell
anything from that. But it is useful because now I want to crop this image
and I want to enlarge it. To do that, let's come to our ranch icon again and Canvas. And right at the top it
says Crop and Resize. I will tap on that because
he's kicking off to our right. And so there's a lot of
dead space behind us, too far left. I don't need that. Bring it into about there. I don't need quite as much space on the other side as well. I'm going to drag in
just on the side. You can see just on the edge of my crop
box where it's blue, that's where I'm dragging from. I'll also maybe make it just a little bit taller because yes, I can drag up as well. Maybe I'll add a little bit
more space where the kick is. A little bit more like this. And I think we'll do for
me and I'll come to done. If I come back to
animation assist play. Yeah, Very are now turn
off Animation Assistant. I want to come to crop
and resize it again. Because now I want
to make this bigger. I was worried about file sizes
when you download stuff. And so the size of all the frame grabs from the video I made, I think it's 1280 by 720. That is good for us because
it reduces the file size, which means that you
can get the frames. That's what I want. But now I've got all the
frames in place. I want a larger file size because as I think
I've mentioned before, the various brush
sizes in Procreate tend to work better within
certain file sizes. Oh, how big is the file
size at the moment? To find that out, Let's come to the top right and
tap on settings. I've got 996 pixels
by 707 won't pixels, that is going to be a
little bit small to get some decent results with quite a few of the
brushes inside Procreate, I want this to be bigger. Now in order to do that,
first thing I'll do, I'll come to the
top two fields and in-between them
there's a little icon, looks like a chain. And I will tap on that. That locks the two
boxes together so that if I enter a new
size in one field, which is say, 50% bigger
than what's there already than the other field
is going to increase by 50%. I also want to resample canvas. Because when you resample
canvas and when I do that look, it says 250 lays available. That's gonna give me
enough space to do my animations because we need a lot of layers
to do animation. And I'm going to increase
the file size from 996. Let's try this to 2 thousand. Did you see at the
top it flashed up. It gives me a 169 layers that is enough for me
to be working with. I have an iPad. I think it's a 2018 or 2019. You may have an iPad which
has slightly less RAM. If you're following along
and you enter 2 thousand there and you don't get
many layers to play with, then maybe enter a setting less than 2 thousand in
that left-hand box. Alright, I'll tap on
Done at the bottom and then afterwards outcome
to done at the top right. And because I turned
on re-sample canvas, the canvas, but also my
drawings get bigger. So now I have the same file, but it's bigger overall. This hopefully will give me some nicer effect with my brush. If I come just to
say the very top, can you see that line as quite ever so
slightly softer because I have increased things in size and that will happen if
you make something bigger, things are gonna get softer. So from that, I can tell you
this is called upscaling. When you start painting on a file which is
fairly small in size. And then gradually
you increase the size and increase the size
and increase the size. A lot of people do this. If you'll go into, my advice is for things like soft
brushes or what have you. That's great. You can do it. It doesn't matter for
fairly texture brushes, as long as they're not too
contrasty and too crackly, You can also do it, but for things like line artwork where you want things crisp, in that case, the attempted
to your line work at the end once you've scaled
to the maximum size so that all your sharp
lines stay sharp because you've added them at the end rather than adding in
them at the beginning. And as you get
bigger and bigger, they get softer and softer. For animation, when
you start out, you may not know how many
layers you're going to need. You might want to make
your initial file size is relatively small, so you got plenty of
layers to play with them. And you've got to the
stage we were at where you've got all your animation
frames where you want them. That will be the
point where you start scaling things up to maybe get a bigger file size
so that you can get brushes that play
nicely on the canvas. Now just before I
move on with this, I need to do some housekeeping, which again is going
to be a chore. I need to come and delete all of the frames
of media in the kick. And so I just leave the
animation at the end. And also one thing I
do want to do as well, just while I'm going through, I know I'm going to need
another frame on top of each of the frames of my animation because
I'm going to be drawing on top of those. I will go through out, do all this rather
tedious business. Then I'll save off a
file as kicker t2. I'll upload it so that you are making both be working
on the same image. In the next video, I will see you there.
4. Painting your Animation Frames: Hello, welcome back. This is kicker 0 to, well, let's see what
we've got so far. I have Animation
Assist turned on. Let's press Play. Okay. Yep, I can build on top of that because if I came
to my Layers panel, I can write down to the bottom because I'll start on frame one. Inside every group,
I have two layers. I have my basic layer
which I've traced off, and I have another layer on top, which I'm going to draw
on top of this lesson. Just for reference. I didn't make an effort to
draw some closed shapes here. I try not to leave any
gaps so that if at some point I wanted to flood fill the various
different areas, quickly laid out
blocks of color. Having all the shapes closed would make my life a lot easier. But when I was doing this, I already had an idea of
what I wanted to do instead. What I want is to have kind of a sparkling multicolored line
going around the character. And that sparkly outline is going to get bigger the faster the bit of a character moves when the legs
suddenly kicks up. I want that to be some nice
large sparkly outlines. And if there is a
bit of a character that isn't moving very much for that particular frame that I'd like it to be a
more of a thinner line. So I took a look inside my brush library and
I found an abstract, this one here, spicule, which sounds like it
should be said with a French accent speaker. Oh, yeah, I like
saying it like that, but if there are any
French speakers listening, if I have butchered
the pronounciation of your lovely
language, I am sorry. I quite like spicule, but I wanted to make a
couple of changes to it. I have black selected, it's on opacity of a 100%
on my brush size I made. I think it was 2,
2% percent wide. Let's take a look
at what I've got. C, that's not bad, but I can do with one
or two changes to that. Because we'll actually look, let's take it up to 3% of a bit undecided about this. Just 3%. And yeah, that is
working better, but I want to make one
or two changes to it. So I come back to my
brush library and I swipe left and duplicate the brush and I'm
going to tap on it, not going to alter
some parameters. Now this is what
I consider to be the main advantage of knowing
about the brush engine. Yes, you can create lots of new brushes and
sell them online. But when you're working on are the main advantages is
being able to come to, for example, the Apple
Pencil and knowing which parameters to alter
to get the look you want. Like for example, with
this, I have this line. I want that line to various size based upon how hard I
press with my parents. So I take my size
and I move it up. I'll take it up to
about say, 50%. If I get a line here and
pressing soft and pressing hard. And you can see now
I get quite a bit of size variation based
off my pen pressure. That's what I want
because I wanted to be able to make
the lines thicker and thinner as I go around the
outline of the character, just based on how hard I press. What I don't want though, is to get the brush fading away. As I press Softer, I want it to be the
same transparency no matter how hard I press. So quick quiz, look
at the sliders. Which of those sliders
do I have to alter so that I always get
the same transparency? No matter how hard I press. The answer is, flow. If I slide that down, see what's happening to the
beginning of my brush stroke. Now I have a brushstroke, which gets thicker and thinner, but it doesn't change
its transparency. That is what I wanted. So I will come to done
unless just check that. Now, pressing soft, pressing, hot, pressing soft again, that's what I want. I think 3% big is the
right size as well. Because I know there's
going to be a lot of movement when
that leg flicks up. I think I'm going to need some fairly big
brushstrokes for that. Let's come down to frame one. Frame one above it. That's the layer I'm
going to be drawing on. So let's move it in a little bit so I can work
a bit more comfortably. I'm drawing with Animation
Assist on because if I turn it off to draw
with I've got that. And it's a bit difficult to
see what I'm doing here. Animation Assist on. Let's come down. Let's double-check,
make sure I've got the right layer selected. Yes, I do. I suppose I could always fade my background laid out a little bit like that. Actually, no, I've got an idea. Let's turn on the onion
skin frames again, because that will
give me an idea of which bits of the
character are going to be moving more Like, for example, if I take a look
at the foot on the left, the back foot, but the front
leg is moving a bit more. So maybe for this frame, the brushstrokes on
the front leg should be a little bit larger
than the backlog. And because I'm
completely paranoid yet, you can see I'm drawing
on the group here. I need to make sure I'm
drawing on the layer. Now let's try. My line. I quite like
all others to hit. All I'm doing is just
tracing off the line. I'm not going to be tracing around all the
bits of the character. I'm not going to trace
that his neck line. I'm not going to trace
the central line or that line where the
shirt joined the waist. I'm just going to do
the outline like this. Maybe do a bit of the chin. I won't bother with the air. Just come around like this. I won't bother where the
sleeves are tucked up on. I won't do the details
on the finger. I will do this on
here coming up. Just do the general
outline of a hand, just doubt about their
bring this down. Actually. Let's undo that because
if I look at that, you can see there's
a bit of movement going on there in that frame. Soft brush just a little
bit harder there. Now for the leg, remember
I'm doing the blue bit, but there is movement there, so I need to make that
a little bit bigger. I'm pressing just a little bit harder and you can see that's bigger compared to
the other foot. There we go. And then
we get to about there. And I'm gonna press a lighter because there's hardly
any movement around here. And that is my outline. If I make the layer underneath
invisible for a second, that is a little bit indistinct. What I wanted to do with this is end up locking the layer, changing the background
color and they're making all the brushstrokes
are lighter and I want to vary the
color a little bit, but that's my very strong. So this is what I'm gonna do. I'm going to slide to the left and I'm going to duplicate. You can see how
it's suddenly got stronger and more well-defined. I will merge down and
then I'll repeat that. I will duplicate it again. Merge down. Now I have a layer now because I duplicated and
merge down and then repeated are effectively got four of the same layer
or merge into one. And you can see, I'm getting a much better
defined brush there. Okay, so the next
thing we're gonna do is I'm going to turn on Alpha lock because
I know I'm gonna have to come back
and do that anyway. If I remember to do
alpha lock every time I finished drawing and then
duplicating my layer. It means I don't have
to come back and repeat the same operation 26
times because animation, just in case I haven't already
said, is time-consuming. And so the more you
can think ahead about the things you're going to
have to do down the line, the more time you're
gonna save yourself. It does mean that look, if you just doing a painting and you come up with an idea, you can investigate that idea straightaway
with animation. If you suddenly came
up with an idea, yes, you could investigate it, but in this case,
I'd have to repeat that investigation 26 times. So a little bit of planning ahead and knowing where you're going with an animation
that can come in useful. Anyway, let's do our next frame. And we start off
small as before, I'll start and the trailing foot and make it fairly
small, fairly tight. I'm not going to bother fading
that blue outline again. I think I know what I'm doing. Just want to come back
around again all hang on. I'm talking and working
at the same time. So I realized a bit of
movement in the shoulder, so that needs to be
a little bit bigger. So press a bit harder. Enormous mood in
the head itself. So press light around there, just go down to the chin. Bit of movement
in the top of the shoulder but not too much. So don't press too hard there. A bit of movement
in the forearms. I press a little bit harder, but not too much down again
and just a little bit harder. That leg again is
moving quite a bit. So I press harder. They're not pressing
full strength. Because I know when
the leg flex up, I'll need some really
big sparkly lines so I don't want to press
too hard at the moment. I want the light to be
bigger when it's moving, but not massive, not
as big as it can go. Anyway. Smaller again,
come down like this and just check what we've got. Let's duplicate. I can see I forgotten
to do an area. I forgot to do the rear arm. I mustn't forget that. So I will delete what I've got there. Other Laura I wanted
to draw on is selected so little bit of movement on there compared
to the previous frame. Not too much. Duplicate. Yes, everything's where
it should be merged down. Duplicated again. Merge down. And actually, you know what alpha lock, something I should do is turn off the blue outline
in the background. I must remember that with
the end of every frame, alpha lock on blue outline off, the remainder of the frames
are going to be very similar. When I come to the Kikee frames, you can see there's a
massive amount of movement. Look at the red
frames leading up. I went to need a very
large line there, but I'm going to make a
rule with this alkene, my leading edge fairly small, but I'll make my trailing edge large. So what does that mean? Take a look at that. Like the top bit of the leg is the leading edge
because that leg is moving up and kind
of anticlockwise. So the top edge, that
is your leading edge, the trailing edge that's
the bottom of the leg. The movement is
traveling upwards. The bit underneath, that
is the trailing edge. I will make the training age large but leading edge small. That way I don't
completely lose the form. And also that's what you
do if you think about say, a sort with wad sharp edge and that is whistling
down through the air or the sharp edge
that's going to remain sharp. But the other age,
they're blunt edge, that's going to be the one
with all the blurry lines on. It's the same principle here, leading edge and trailing edge. Anyway, I think the best thing to do right now
is for me to fade out and fade back in once I've done all the sparkly lines. So I will see you in a bit. That was nice and relaxing. What I was doing didn't require
huge amount of thoughts. So when you're doing this, put on some music, put on a podcast, whatever you like to
do in the background. Although for me I find music
without words tends to fit in the same brain space that I'm using when I'm
drawing a podcast, I find having to concentrate
on words and use my eyes kind of feels like
I'm trying to live in two parts of my brain
at the same time. Just for me, music
without words. Anyway, this file is
kicker 03 sparkles. It is available as a download
and then creating copies of my files and renaming them as I go along fairly frequently. Or that is because I have a
lot of frames to deal with, but I also want to experiment. And if I get to a stage
where I liked something and then I experiment on it and
then decide I don't like it, I'm kind of stuck with it. Unless I do iterative saves. That will be where
you save your file. And actually I'll do that now because I've uploaded this file. I want to experiment
with it some more so I will duplicate. Then I'll come and
I'll rename it to kicker 0 full backgrounds. The reason I'm naming
this is because in this session I want to check
what I've got first of all, but then I want to start
working on a background for this and also something that's going to sit
in the foreground. Serena in lab. That way, if I decide I hate what I've done
with this file, I always had my previous
file as backup. But anyway, let's
see what I've got. I've got that. Let's make it a little
bit smaller and pensions so you can see the whole thing. You go. And so at this stage what
I want to do is just check for errors before
I do anything else. So I'll come to loop. Just play it and see what
happens and looking at it. Yeah. Can you see I'll circle it. Can you see I've
got a little stray sparkle to the pairing. It looks like in one frame. Also looking at the body, you can see the
blue outline just suddenly flipping on and off. Again just for one frame. I need to take a look at that. So press pause and I'll scrub backwards through
my timeline until I get to where I find
that. That's the one. You can see it
appearing in blue. Because I have that
particular frame selected when I come to my
layers panel, that GZ. And sure enough, I'd
forgot to turn off that blue layer and also I
forgot to turn on the Alpha. Yes, I left a couple of
deliberate mistakes in because I need to show you
this checking process. But there's also another one. Where was that stray sparkle? There it is on the first frame. Right there. I'll come to my eraser. What arrays do a half. Just get rid of that. Unless try play again. It's working. I think I've taken
up the errors, but I could do with a bit of
a pause at the beginning and the end because a guy here leap straight
into the reaction. So what I will do
at the beginning, I'll tap and welcome
to hold duration. I don't know whether I
wanted to keep this butt. Good thing about whole
duration is at anytime you just come in and move
the slider again. I'll try five frames
at the beginning. Let's try at the end. Let's try four
frames at the end. Let's see what that looks like. Yeah, I prefer that you can hear a little bit of a
pause just before you dive into reaction. Okay. Now I think I'm ready
to oh, hang on. What's the just
where I'm circling. Take a look. It
looks like I've got a one or two little
stray sparkles there, so we get rid of that. And that was on group
number ten, layers 79. There's a lot of
layers 79 is here. You may notice for
this I'm not following my own advice where I
rename all the layers. That is because
I'm adding layers, sometimes 26 at a time. And as long as they're
inside the groups, the groups are named
G21, G11, G12. So as long as those layers
are inside the group, I don't really care
what they're called. Renaming them with just
takes so long. Anyway. There's my animation. Let's start to do something
a bit more creative with it.
5. Adding a Foreground and Background: Okay, let's pick up where we left off from the
previous video. How my animation, and there's one or two extra
things I want to show you to do with animation. Okay, so let's move on. The first thing I'm
going to do is come to settings and I'm going to
take the onion skin frames down to none because
I don't need those green and red
frames in the background distracting me from
what I'm about to do. Very quickly. I'm inserting a section
into this video because procreate 5.2
is being released. And there's a little
tweak which can be useful if I come to Settings, you can see my onion
skin frames and my onion skin opacity will
now within procreate 5.2, you have this onion skin colors. And if I tap on that, I can affect the
look or the color of all frames are leading up to my key frame and all the frames leading
away from my keyframe. Okay, those two colors
are a bit too similar. Let's try another one.
On the other side. The next thing is, I won't just some kind of pattern
or decoration or symbol in the
background that's going to play while the
animation is running. I also want the same kind
of thing in the foreground. So something in the background which the animation plays over, the thing in the
foreground will be in front of the animation. So to do that, let's come to our first
frame and open up my layers. So now I'm down at the bottom and I'm going
to create a new layer. And I'm going to drag this layer down underneath groups 01. Now it's not blocking groups 01. And I will come to
my wrench icon, my actions, and I
will insert a file. I have a file for you here
it is a Japanese symbol, which I'm informed
stands for courtesy. So let's put courtesy. Let's make it bigger and
come to my layers panel. And straightaway,
here's my problem. I want that to be
in the background while the animation is playing. But if I press play,
I don't get it. Let's try putting it out on loop so you can see the
problem more clearly. Okay, that's not working because procreate is treating that as just any other
frame of the animation. It blips at once and the
animation runs through. To get around that, I tap on it. And just the first frame of any animation gets this
option background. If I turn it on, is now
a background layer. And now if I play, because that is now
a background layer, the animation plays
in front of it. Similarly, if I come
all the way to the end, come to the top, had a lab, that layer is sitting
up above group 26. I'll do what I did before. I will insert a file this time, I'm going to choose
what I'm led to believe is the Japanese
symbol for wisdom. I'm gonna move that over here, make it a little bit smaller. I'm not going to make
it too small because I want to resize it again. Once I have decided that this last frame
is my foreground, then what I'll do, I'll come to, I think it's about
frame 12 where the kick is at its
maximum height there. Because, well, I do want to move these symbols
around a little bit. Let's come up to Layer 80 again, because that needs to be
a little bit smaller. So I will come to
Transform tool, make it a little bit
smaller, like this. Sudden my layers panel, I will also come down to the one at the bottom because I think that's a
bit too far over, so I'll move that
down to about there. Applewhite. All right, okay, so
now when I play, I've got the symbol for
courtesy in the background. And I also have the symbol for wisdom for some strange
reason being kicked. No. Not really sure why wisdom is being given a good
kick in this video, maybe it's a comment
about some of the things that are happening
in the world today. Anyway, let's move on. Because now that is pretty much everything I wanted to show
you as regards animation. And so for the rest
of this video, I just want to work this
up just so we can do a couple of workflow things
which might be of use to you. Okay, so for the first thing, unlike come down to the bottom. For the background,
I want it to be a dark background and I want those dark sparkles
to be lighter. Looking at the animation, I'm reminded of some of
those cheesy animations you use to get at the start
of like 80s TV programs. Let's do something a little
bit cheesy 80s TV program. So let's make that a dark blue. I know the moment the animation is practically disappeared, but if you're a member, all my sparkly animation
frames are called alpha lock, so I can paint those
whatever color I want for the symbol for
Kurtz here at the bottom. Well, I could do without being a slightly different color. I'm thinking about maybe doing
an overlay on top of that. What I would do is
add another layer. It's like malaria at the bottom
as well, by swiping left. And I will group them. And I'll call this group
background for this. All right, Well, let's do alpha lock because it's the most simple and straightforward. I will choose a color from the background and maybe move a little bit more towards the red end of blue and make
things a little bit lighter. What brush do I have? Let's go for the
airbrushing soft air brush and its maximum capacity of
maximum size, that's fine. And I will just color over this. Remember, I want this to
be a background image. I don't need it a leaping
out in that large, friendly brick red
kind of like that. Let's make it a bit more
round movable multiples, purple like this. And I will just draw
in from the bottom. Just so I get a slight
difference in color tone there. It's very simple to do. Let's try sticking a
glow on it. Why not? Let's duplicate that layer. I will come to the label low, and I will turn it very light
purple. And I'll do this. I'll just draw on
the background. You can only see
the outline of it. But if I come back and
I turn alpha lock off, without less lighted,
come to Gaussian Blur. I'll come to the top left-hand, slide my finger along until
it gets a halo effect. Tap my layers panel
to commit to that. Let's lower the opacity for that because it's way too strong. Take it down to 0, and gradually dial in
the tone you want. That is as much as I want. I think the reason you do it this way where you
go down to 0 and dial thing in is because normally you starting
out at a 100%, it's something about
going down from 100%. It will almost
inevitably end up with a stronger effect because
you're going down and you see the effect getting less than you do if you take the opacity down to 0 and
dial the effect in like this. And it turns to be the
case that when you're learning how to use a
package like Procreate, people tend to be so happy
with the new effects they found that they tend to
overdo them a little bit. And so by taking this
down to 0 and dialing in, you're going to end up
with something you just a little bit more subtle. I wanted almost not be there. Anyway. I still have a spare layer because
I created a lab that's come to insert a
file again, what do I want? Overlay paper there that will be included as well
is just downloading. And there's my overlay paper. I'll make it big like this. And actually maybe
make it just a little bit bigger
because I want to get that grainy effect quite
large in the background. If you remember from the
layer blend mode videos, if I turn that to one of the contrast layer blend modes,
midway becomes invisible. If it's lighter than my gray, it becomes lighter if it's dark and then migrate,
it becomes darker. So what I've got
here is instead of a very plain blue background
with a fairly flat logo, it's now more textured
because they are 81, which has that paper texture on there is in one of the
contrast layer blend mode, look, it's an overlay
at the moment. That will be soft, light, hard light, too
strong, vivid light. Again, that's a little bit
harder than I would like. I think for this overlay
suits me better, but maybe I could do with a little bit more
contrast there. Now I could duplicate
the layer that can work. And if that's too strong, again, I can take the opacity down to 0 and dial in the extra amount. In contrast that I want
to round about there. I'll make that
invisible for a second because I just to show you
another way of doing it, I could also come to curves. Remember curves,
hopefully I didn't scare you away when
I explain them. And to get more
contrast in there, I can just take
the bottom part of the curve and move it this way so the dots
have got darker, but I can also take
the upper part. Satellites get lighter
and as a result, it gets more contrasty. And I can also add an
extra point there. Say about there,
another point there. So you get the S-curve, which creates a lot of contrast. Now that is way too much better. Do something about that. Otherwise, you might think, oh, note curves don't work. They do work and they can
work very well indeed, but you just have to spend the
time tweaking them around. Okay. Let's take a look at
what I did with that and that worked as well. So you've got a choice. Well, you can go for golden, stick, the top layer
on there as well. What's making a
difference? Yeah, That is. But I think that's too much, so I will get rid of that. That's my background. Now what about the foreground, that little symbol at the top? Well again, I want to
do something with that. So I'm gonna create another
layer and swipe from the left and ungroup these and
rename the layer two. Foreground. Let's come to this logo and let's just
come straight to hue, saturation and
brightness because I just want to play around with the color just to get a general idea of
what I'm looking for. Maybe make it a
little bit lighter, T saturated, both saturated. Maybe that should be a
slightly different color, so it stands out a bit more. Maybe a slightly creamy
color like that. And I think I'll duplicate it. I'll come to this layer
here and I'll drag it down a little bit like that. Now with the layer on top,
I will not be underneath, so I'll drag it underneath. And again they come
to hue saturation and brightness to the layer that's maybe this
quite a bit darker, maybe desaturated a little bit. Lucky case, it's not obvious. I'm just making this
stuff up as I go along. And maybe for that
Gaussian blur. And the reason I'm making
things up as we go along is because
sometimes it's good to just see somebody working and you get ideas about workflow because workflow is every bit
as important as the tools, which I believe
I've said before, but it doesn't hurt. Say it again. I lower the opacity so
I'm getting a blend of the original color plus the
blue in the background, which will help to fix that
in place a little bit more. And let's create a new layer
and drag that up to the top. Because I want to insert the
same file as I used before, that overlay paper file. Move it up to about there. Change the blend
mode to what was it. Try overlay again and I
will tap on the outcome to clipping mask so that texture is only showing on
the layer below. Just thinking about this, you probably wouldn't see this. But can I take my layer? I'm going to tap and
hold and I'm gonna drag down right to the bottom. And you can see just by
holding it at the bottom, the layers are sliding upwards. I want to drop that
in background layer. There it is. I will position us. That's just underneath
the original paper layer. That way I am
getting the texture, but also I was thinking
when this guy kicks, the kick is gonna go in front of that shadow in
the background, but also behind the
symbol in the front. I'll just quickly slide up again because I have a
redundant layer there, which I don't think I need. So let's get rid of that. Let's give this quick plate. Won't come up. There you go. I like that, but there is
one small, tiny problem. The animation still black
and you can't see it. For this. Let's come back up to
my foreground layer. Actually, yes, I do want an extra layer inside
the foreground layer. For this layer, I'm gonna
come to my paint brushes. I'll choose a medium
hard air brush. I'm sure the size of the rule. Okay. And now I'm gonna come to around whereabouts
my yellows are, maybe study cool yellow. It starts off with players
choose an almost white yellow. Make sure I'm painting on that layer 87 in the foreground. Little circle like this. Then a slide along
a little bit more, maybe make it a little
bit more orangey. Choose something there, then a bit more orangey
and quite intense orange. Then come more towards
red, or deeper orange. Then more towards red, but a deeper red. Finally, quite a deep red. Like this. These, I want to be
the colors that I'm going to use for the
actual animation. Let's take a look at this. What I'm thinking is why
there's a law of movement. I'll make the colors brighter and when there's less movement, I made the colors darker. So for that, the most
obvious frame to choose is one of these ones here where the kicking
is at full extent. I can get an idea of
the range of colors I want to use and how they
stand against the background. So soft air brush, I don't want it pretty
big. Just double check. I need to be painting on the
layer rather than the group. Lets me as long a
little bit so I can have my Layers
open one I wanted. Let's try sampling that color that the brightest
one arm unless 179. When I paint, go. Let's just try playing
with these colors. What I can do, because
straightaway I'm thinking this color on
the end was too bright. I want the next
brightest color along. Let's take a look
at this orange. Now. In fact, let's see
what this aren't just like for the base file that is looking a bit
too bright for me. Let's make this red. Let's try a slightly deeper at That's not standing out
enough. I don't think so. I want to color range from that red coming
through to the orange, going through to the yellow, then the maximum lateness
yellow is gonna be this. So now what I do is I
come back up to the top, make sure the layer is selected. And I'll tap and hold on my eraser so I can erase
with my current brush, get adds up to a 100%, make it slightly smaller, and get rid of that, and get rid of that. Sorry, I don't
accidentally choose them. Those are my four
colors I want to use. Now for the sake of consistency, I need to come
back to this frame here and work outwards
from that point. I'll come to the frame before, but I'm wondering
now, onion skin. No, that's not really
going to help me as it, let's just look at that. Make a mental note of
why the various colors. Then come back to here, make sure the right
frame is selected. Paint brushes selected
same size and become too. What I want to do at this
stage is Rob between there, there, there and there. And I get an idea of whether the general coloring
in is consistent. And yeah, I'm fairly
happy with that. Then afterwards I
would go in and do the small areas once
I realized that the whole area is
fairly consistent. Now, I'll come to
the frame before I, once I've done all
the frames will fall. I will do all the
frames afterwards. This is gonna take some time, so I will fade out and fade
back in once I've done it. Okay, So I've counted my
last frame and then if I gradually cycle through
what I've been doing, you can see where, where
there was the most movement. That was the lightest
part of the outline. But also when you're doing that, you have to try
and gradually fade those brighter colors
back into the background. You may also notice that I
did a little streak of light just running down the left side of the figure has
the frames went on, which gradually fades away. Because whenever
you're animating and you're doing
colors like this, you have to think about
how does the frame look, but also how does
the frame looked compared to all the other
frames surrounding it? And you've got to
make the colors work it together as a whole. The very last thing,
what do we got here? Frame two of the
actual animation. I can tap on it and
drag it out and I can drop it in wherever I want. But now I've got a
problem with that. You can see the
order is wrong now. So I will double tap
Undo, Move layer, and then I'll come to the top layer 87 where I put
all my color swatches on, I should make that invisible. The reason I put that layer with all the
color swatches on in the foreground layer
is because I was coloring in things with
the Animation Assist on. If I turn off Animation Assist, That's what I'm left with. There's no way I'll be
able to cover all that in trying to guess what
color should be a wireframe. But with animation
assist with arm. Because my swatch layer is
in the foreground layer, which is sets of foreground. Those colors were always visible no matter what
frame I was drawing on. But now I don't need it. Make it invisible. Okay, so let's take a look
and see what we've got. I'll stick it on loop. There we go. We can make it bigger. If I do four-fingered tap, I can take away the interface. Just see the animation
playing as a whole. That is animation. Let's press pause for that. Those are various controls at your disposal and also using
the workflow in action. The only thing I would
say now is what, as it's looping, it's going a little bit fast because do you remember me talking about
the chattering lines? That is where the lines
vary from frame to frame. So you get slightly
wobbly lines will actually add quite like
that for this animation, because you've got different
sparkles going on there. And I think at the moment
is going so fast that you can't really see
them at the moment. I've got 25 frames per second. Let's take that down
a little bit to what, 20 frames a second. Well, the animation is
a little bit slower. It's a little bit
more real time, but I'm getting more of
the effect I want where I can see the individual
sparkles on each frame. Okay? Four-fingered tap to
bring back the interface. And there's our animation. There are the technical bits. Plus also, there's a workflow.
Simon Foster
